The things that were Temporary exhibition

The medieval thimbles and needles of the city's Jewish community trace an invisible line with the long hours of work at the Grober factory, Girona's most important industry for decades. The factory manufactured highly specialised narrow fabrics such as cord, ribbons, elastics, tapes and braids, as well as buttons. The factory grew into an industrial complex with 1,500 people entering and leaving each day, with women accounting for 90% of the workforce. But there were also men, boys, girls and entire families, who all supported the strikes of 1899, 1911 and in the 1920s to improve the deplorable working conditions. For a 10-hour working day, men were paid only 4 pesetas, young people between 16 and 18, 2.75 pesetas, while the women had no fixed wage. The warpers, who were women, prepared the threads for the warp of the fabric: these threads are held taut on a loom while other threads (the weft) are inserted, interlacing them to form a single woven fabric. Through figures such as Ariadne, Penelope, Arachne and the Moirae or Parcae, mythology portrays women's ancestral relationship with weaving, as bringers and carers of life. Weaving life, spinning names, warping the threads of time, stitching generations together.

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A thimble and some needles were found during excavations in the Call neighbourhood, in a house that had belonged to the Jewish Desportal family. They had most probably been used by the women of the family for the household tasks of weaving and sewing. These are now kept in the Museum of Jewish History. In 2017, the machines and memorabilia from the former Grober factory in Girona, the majority of whose workforce were women, were given to the city and have been kept in the Girona History Museum ever since. Of particular note is this narrow-fabric warping machine, one of the few models left in the country.